Contents
- “They were looking for you for several weeks, but all the phones were turned off. Where did you disappear?
- – Did you invite your wife Tatyana Petrovna to travel with you?
- – You have an unusual view of the world: find beauty in the deserts, love snakes and spiders when other people are afraid of them.
- – I know that at one time even mongooses and cobras lived in your house, which starred in the film “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” How did it happen?
- – Your eldest grandson Filaret is already 13 years old. Ever thought to involve him in the Animal World program?
- – This year you have been conducting the program for 40 years. Are you planning to leave soon?
- – Although you have a co-host, there are plenty of other things to do. What time does your day start?
It is impossible to believe, but the scientist, host of the program “In the world of animals” recently celebrated his 80th birthday.
January 12 2020
It is not easy to find Nikolai Nikolaevich at home. He gets up at 6 am and his day is scheduled by the hour.
“They were looking for you for several weeks, but all the phones were turned off. Where did you disappear?
– I was in Australia for exactly a month. It’s a miracle! I went there with a group of people who want to learn as much as possible about the nature of the continent, its animals. My friends organized this tour. They were driving, and I sat and told the passengers about my experience of being there, about the history of the formation of Australia. We drove about 5 thousand km. We climbed small mountains, looked at all sorts of unusual stones: round, oval, ovoid, three or four human heights in size. Some lay in the desert, others stood upright and for some reason did not fall. It is not clear where they came from and how they got here. These are mystical places.
– Did you invite your wife Tatyana Petrovna to travel with you?
– God forbid taking your spouse on such difficult expeditions. This was not a vacation, but field research. I have a special interest in the nature of Australia. I once spent a year there on a business trip from the Ministry of Education of the USSR, studying the deserts. He worked at the Australian National University on exchange with Moscow State University. This was a serious scientific assignment. Spent a year of high quality, wrote a doctoral dissertation, defended it, received a position and the title of professor. I have a work record book with one continuing entry: first, a graduate student of the Department of Biogeography of the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University, then a junior researcher, senior, associate professor and professor. Here is such a boring work. But I am just very proud that I didn’t change my place of work and did other things on a voluntary basis.
– You have an unusual view of the world: find beauty in the deserts, love snakes and spiders when other people are afraid of them.
– Maybe it attracted me to them. Birds are nice to study, they are beautiful. I understand their songs and perfectly distinguish their voices. But many bird watchers are doing this. Keeping snakes and lizards is more interesting than a cat, dog, budgerigar. You already know what our usual friends will do. And when you take a spider or a phalanx, you have no idea what and how it works, why it is so and not otherwise.
The concept of “love animals” is wrong. What does “love” mean? I treat all of them cordially, I want to know more about them, I am interested in their biology and behavior. If there is an opportunity to start a house, I start it. I kept a lot of people: turtles and lizards, then I switched to snakes, then to phalanxes and scorpions.
– I know that at one time even mongooses and cobras lived in your house, which starred in the film “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” How did it happen?
– It began with the fact that Alexander Mikhailovich Zguridi, the famous director of documentary films about animals and nature, decided to create a television program on the basis of his tapes. The first issue of In the Animal World aired on April 17, 1968. Alexander Mikhailovich led the program with Nikolai Pavlovich Naumov, professor of the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University. Once Zguridi phoned my teacher at the geography department and asked him to participate. But at that time, filming in the program had not yet aroused enthusiasm in anyone. And my teacher offered to send me. So, in the December 1968 program, I came up with a story about the animals of Africa, which, it is true, hadn’t been to yet, but I knew a lot about it. Zguridi was then already 63 years old, and I was 31, that is, almost half my age.
Six months passed, and Alexander Mikhailovich invited me to go with him to Africa to shoot the film “The Wild Life of Gondwana.” I helped him to catch animals, to lure a rhinoceros, an elephant. And sometimes I had to run away from them. And in 1975 Zguridi invited me to take part in an expedition to India to shoot the feature film Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Zguridi knew that I had been working with snakes for many years and knew how to handle them, even poisonous ones. In a hunting lodge deep in the forest, far from the city, we started filming. The son of an embassy worker played the boy Teddy, whom the cobra Nagaina wanted to kill. I was off-screen at a distance of a meter in case the snake did something wrong to grab it and drag it aside.
We filmed a lot in India, but it turned out that two months of a business trip was not enough to create a full-fledged film. And we brought Abu fakir, six cobras, seven mongooses to Moscow and continued our work.
– We then somehow did not think that no hotel would take a person with so many animals. Zguridi, knowing that my family had gone to their dacha, asked me to take the cobras and mongooses to him. At that time we had a two-room apartment in Orekhovo-Borisovo, and that’s where we moved in. In the morning a studio car “Seagull” came to our dormitory area. Containers with animals were loaded into it, and Abu and I were taken to the shooting. So we spent two summer months with cobras and mongooses. Sometimes neighbors dropped in to see. Abu showed them a serpent, and they were delighted.
– The program was first in the studio. Zguridi and I sat and discussed excerpts from his films or tapes sent by someone, that is, there were no real travels. And somewhere in the 70s, the silver age of our program began. Cameras became smaller and lighter, operators were able to follow the presenter. We visited Yellowstone National Park in America, in the east of the USA and in Canada, in the Galapagos, saw the amazing nature of Cuba, went to India to see elephants, rode across Thailand and all of Africa. Unless they got to Australia. Far away. During this time, the program became popular. Zguridi left her after “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, said that he would shoot feature films. And we with the famous correspondent of “Komsomolskaya Pravda” Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov began to lead it in turn.
– The character is like that. From my school years I went to the circle of young naturalists. As boys, we traveled through forests, mountains and wherever we can climb. This competitive spirit is childish between friends, when who climbs higher, who jumps, has remained with me since childhood.
– Unfortunately, this passed me by. Of course, I miss raising children and grandchildren. But I hope my example shows them how important it is to have an interesting job, to be passionate, not to drink or smoke. They have a lot to learn from my own behavior. If I have to choose between going somewhere or going to a meeting with my grandson, I still choose the first one, and my grandmother goes to school. I don’t have enough time for everything.
– We communicate with her regularly and give each other pleasure. She is a calm, friendly and positive person. She never has a desire to criticize someone, to complain. She is always in a good mood and tells me what happened to her.
– Your eldest grandson Filaret is already 13 years old. Ever thought to involve him in the Animal World program?
“That would be wrong behavior for me. He needs to be engaged. He does not study with only A’s, he is good, so to speak, and he needs to pull himself up. If I still start to take him to the programs! And this is, in general, dangerous. Because children from television sometimes have star fever, they begin to think that they are something. Yes, even if star fever does not arise, the grandson will climb into Cs in his studies. The main thing is to finish school well. We took the boy Alyosha Lapin into the program. He is the same age as Filaret and the son of my co-workers. Lesha was more active than the rest of the guys when we periodically filmed the children’s page. Why is the boy like that? Because mom’s upbringing, she’s a producer. My grandson will come from the shooting and I will say: “Come on, I ran on.” And I’ll leave. And Lesha Lapin’s house with his mother is debriefing, and dad, the artistic director, prompts something. Now we are transmitting the program (it is on the Carousel channel. – Approx. Antenna) from me to Alyosha. He has been in the frame for ten years. First he asked questions, then answered, then he began to talk about animals himself – to go with his mother to the shooting, to make reports. Now I don’t have to go, Lesha can do it on his own.
– This year you have been conducting the program for 40 years. Are you planning to leave soon?
– Not only do I plan, it will be so. You just understand that people are transmitting at a certain age. And in the field, with trips and trips, up to 60 years maximum. I’m a little more. All the students who were my students and participated in the program have already made their own programs. Vanya Zatevakhin created “Dialogues about Animals”, Sasha Abolits will now do the series “Planet of Horses”, Sasha Khaburgaev is filming a program with the humorous name “Khaburgaev in kind”. This is the next generation. They have already entered the arena, almost all of them, except Vanya, are bald and have gray beards. What should I do there? We need to prepare the young presenter on time, tell him to follow my path in his own manner and keep the program. Which is quite logical. You must have time to do this while you are healthy and can manage the process. And not in another way, as happened with the “Travelers Club” when the host was gone and the program was closed. It gives me pleasure to help Alyosha. At first I called him my young correspondent, and now we are co-hosts!
– Although you have a co-host, there are plenty of other things to do. What time does your day start?
– Yesterday there was a public event, and I came home at 11, went to bed at one in the morning. And at 6 in the morning, my internal alarm goes off, I wake up. There is a lack of sleep, of course. Sometimes I am overworked. I have to go to bed before 12. When I succeed, I am very pleased.
– And how? I have been doing it since my school years.
– She will do something for her grandchildren, for her daughter and take them away. And I have enough vegetable salad without mayonnaise, with vegetable oil, oatmeal and buckwheat porridge.
– I am expected in the club of supporters of active longevity “100 years”. This is our public organization. Do you know what to do in order not to grow old? You have to sing, dance and laugh! We have said enough, I will take the subway. You can’t get there by a taxi with such traffic jams.
Dossier
Born: June 20, 1937 in Moscow.
Education: Graduated from the Department of Biogeography, Faculty of Geography, Moscow State University.
Career: since 1963 he has been working at the Department of Biogeography, Faculty of Geography, Moscow State University. Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, International Ecologist. Since 1968 he has been taking part in the program “In the world of animals” as a speaker, since 1977 he has become a presenter. Author and co-author of many television and video films about nature, such as the series “Through the Pages of the Red Book”, “Rare Animals”, “Standards of the Biosphere”, “The Kingdom of the Russian Bear” (together with the BBC). In 2003, 2004 and 2008 he took part in the “Last Hero” competition.
Marital status: wife – Tatyana Petrovna Drozdova (married since 1977), children – Nadezhda (from her first marriage) and Elena. The grandchildren are 13-year-old Filaret and 6-year-old Jan.
Blicopros
– What is the most valuable life lesson?
– Three times participation in the “Last Hero” competition. Thanks to Konstantin Lvovich Ernst!
– The main thing in dealing with animals is …
– Kindness and attention (so as not to bite).
– The problem that was difficult for you to solve?
– To combine faith in God and knowledge (but still managed!).
– You never learned …
– Drink (you know what).
– The best gift for you is …
– Your smiles, dear friends!
I bet you did not know that … “I think about people (I assure you, only good!)”. And sometimes Nikolai Nikolaevich writes with his left hand.